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The year 1840 is a landmark in culinary history. Antoine's restaurant had its beginnings in New Orleans, San Francisco consumed the first vintage of commercially produced California wine, and London society imitated Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford (1788–1861), with her cure for what she described as "a sinking feeling" she suffered each afternoon. It was then customary in England for the aristocracy to eat a huge breakfast, make do with a small lunch, and sit down to a substantial meal for dinner at eight o'clock or after. Milady's late afternoon discomfort was shared by many another and so was her cure: She ordered tea and a collation of sandwiches and cakes to complement the tea to be served daily at the stroke of five and invited friends to join her.

From the 1840s on, the tradition of afternoon tea with sandwiches and pastries trickled down from the aristocracy to enter English life at large. By the year of Anna's death, the conservative Mrs. Beeton's authoritative Household Management pronounced afternoon tea—"a meal of elegant trifles"—to be obligatory in any well-run Victorian household. Not long after Anna's death, the novelist George Gissing was to write, as if in tribute to her, "Nowhere is the English genius for domesticity more notably evidenced than in the festival of afternoon tea." As it began, so it remained essentially a female ritual, but gradually two distinct "teas" evolved.

Aristocratic homes served what was called "low tea" in the afternoon. This was a repast of "elegant trifles" like cucumber sandwiches and other finger foods rather than solid nutrition; the emphasis was placed upon presentation of the foods and socializing over the delicacies. This "terribly, terribly nice" affair became known as "low tea" in contrast to the petty bourgeois and working class custom of "high tea," which has also been called "meat tea" or "farmhouse tea." These are family affairs—hearty, lavish spreads to satisfy the appetites of workers home from toiling and children hungry after school. High tea serves the humbler classes in Britain as the evening meal and often consists of such left-overs as cold joints of mutton, with fresh baked scones, buns, or biscuits and tea in abundance to warm the belly and banish fatigue. "High tea" is not parallel to "high church"; the more elegant and ceremonious the tea, the further it departs from high tea. In Britain during Victoria's later years, teatime migrated from five o'clock to four, and its ceremonial aspects attained the very height of ostentation. Besides the evidence of Oscar Wilde's play The Importance of Being Earnest and Saki's short story "Tea," we have historical accounts of these excesses. Margot Asquith, second wife of the British Liberal prime minister Lord Herbert Asquith (1852–1928), writes in her autobiography how the Rothschild family kept great state in, among other places, their home in Waddesdon, where one day Prime Minister Asquith was waited on at teatime by the butler. "Tea, coffee, or a peach from the wall, sir?" "Tea, please." "China, Indian or Ceylon, sir?" "China, please." "Lemon, milk, or cream, sir?" "Milk, please." "Jersey, Holstein, or Shorthorn, sir?" Volumes could be written.

See also British Isles; Coffee; Dinner; India; Lunch; Meal; Restaurants; Stimulants.

James Norwood Pratt